


be your voice

by rossetti



Category: Panic At The Disco
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-12-08
Updated: 2008-12-08
Packaged: 2017-10-08 04:28:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,207
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/72684
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rossetti/pseuds/rossetti
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"yeah that was a really tough kind of thing to figure out." -ryan "i don't know if i can do it justice. these are your words. how am i going to be your voice?" - brendon. live in denver dvd.</p><p>"i'm a stray dog sick. please let me in, please let me in." - 20 dollar nose bleed</p>
            </blockquote>





	be your voice

"How did it go?" Spencer asks when Brendon shows up, smelling of airplane and exhaustion, just in time for dinner, just as they've given up the pretense of working on a new arrangement for Lying.

"Fine, fine," Brendon smiles from behind his sunglasses, a bright but defensive smile, the type of smile Ryan's learned to respect and leave alone even when it asks for follow-up questions.

"Did you and Pete have fuuuuun?" Jon's pretty baked, enough that he slides under Brendon's radar and Brendon just grins and nods, starts a joke about how much fun they had. The tense stillness doesn't ease from Brendon's shoulders, even when Shane claps him on the back as he adds to the story, his white sunglasses pushed up over his forehead, exposing his crinkly, happy eyes.

"So I'm thinking waffles," Spencer says decisively, and the conversation turns back to negotiating their meal.

**

It's not HCT but it's a good tour. He misses Greta and Alex and Erick and he was really pissed when they had to cut their set back down to forty five minutes, but they're writing music and playing music and Ryan's comfortable, especially now, sitting next to Jon in a green room with their acoustics settled in their laps.

Jon plays a new chord next to him, and starts to hum-harmonize with what they've been idly working on. Ryan keeps his chords steady, lets Jon work this one out. Jon closes his eyes and starts singing, stringing words together about Thai lunches and boxed wine and pretty flowers and Ryan is hit with a sudden wave of thankfulness. Jon doesn't need his words, his direction.

When they had to re-start, when he'd realized it wouldn't work anymore, Brendon couldn't be his voice, Jon had made sure to get him very, very high before asking in a roundabout way if it would be OK if he wrote some music and maybe some lyrics, too, but Ryan could always say no, of course, or change things. Ryan had stared at Jon's hair and wondered how he'd made everyone else in his band afraid of creation. They're better than that, now, but--

"Jon, Jon," he'd said, leaning forward to grab Jon's shoulders. "I can't write for him anymore, so we need to write for us." Jon had nodded solemnly and taken him at his word. Ryan is still stupidly glad he didn't turn another member of his band into his weapon. Jon's his salvation, in some way.

He backs up Jon's vocals with a chorus about boxed Thai flowers and Jon grins at him.

**

Ryan doesn't try to hear it, doesn't ask Pete for a listen or bug Brendon about a sneak peak, until it leaks on the Internet. He's sad since he just left Keltie, Spencer's hibernating with his dogs and his plasma television, Jon's in Chicago and Pete talks about it in his blog -- so he figures, _why not_?

It's a dense album. He replays the song before he finishes the album but makes himself wait out "West Coast Smoker." Then he puts it on repeat and goes to get his pipe. His hands are shaking and he texts Pete, "u turned his voice into the bullet in the gun aimed at his head," and goes to get a drink.

After two drinks he gives up on glaring at his phone and calls Pete.

"His was my voice to use," he grates out. "Mine, Pete, 'cause I can look after him."

Pete snorts. "Is that what you're doing? You sure?"

"I'm here, Pete, and I'm with him." He stops to take a sip of his whiskey. "I'm on tour with him, recording with him. I'm not trying to break him." He presses his glass to his forehead.

"Making him sing about love won't do shit," Pete replies and Ryan throws his glass at the wall.

"Making him sing about cheap hookups and addiction won't do fuck all either," he yells and throws the phone after his glass.

**

"Well," Spencer says, delicately. He raises a finger. Spencer rolls his eyes. "Dude, what the fuck ever, tell me now or tell me later but Pete texted me to check on you."

"Pete fucked it all up," he doesn't look at Spencer. "All my hard work." He makes a flushing noise. Spencer walks away, comes back with water he makes Ryan drink, even as Ryan glares at him.

"Pete did what now?" Spencer asks, after he takes away the glass.

"Brendon's not ready," is all he says and Spencer sighs.

"No shit," Spencer pats him on the head. "Not your fault, Ry, now why don't you get some sleep."

**

He's not that hungover in the morning and he's not surprised. You don't get a hangover from more anger and fear and pot than alcohol, not the type that drops you down a hole the next day.

So he calls.

Brendon tells him about recording, tells him about how well _the process_ is going. How it's great to be in a studio but know he won't be there long, how he can't wait to be in the studio with the rest of the band again. Ryan listens. Brendon is singing his own words, Ryan has to listen.

"The album leaked," he tells Brendon at the next break. "I heard your song for Pete."

"Rad, yeah?" Brendon's voice gets far away, like he's pulled the phone away from his ear. "It turned out great, Patrick and I might do a little thing or two together, y'know, a holiday spoof."

"Rad. Yeah." He wonders if his phone could sustain another crash into the wall.

"So I'll see you in LA?" Brendon's voice fades back in an d he nods.

"Yeah, yeah, course" and he almost leaves it at that, but-- "Why'd you let him do that to you?" And that's too honest, so he adds, "I mean - why that song?"

"Look, Ryan," Brendon's voice has gone far away again and he says it fast, defensively, like maybe it won't hurt if he just does it like this. "Just 'cause you don't want to write for me anymore doesn't mean I don't want to sing."

"It just didn't work anymore," is his only defense. "I didn't stop writing for you!" Even saying it hurts his throat.

"Yeah, well," he can see Brendon's shrug in his head. "Maybe it's better this way."

"No," he knows the truth. "No, Brendon. We're in this together."

Brendon snorts in his ear. "Sometimes you're too cheesy to exist Ryan Ross." He nods at the phone.

"I just don't see," he leans down to pick Hobo up. "Why not write about the happy?" he's pleading, he knows, but he needs to say it to Brendon for once. "Love deserves songs, too."

"Duh," Brendon turns it into a joke and he closes his eyes. Brendon's not ready. "Love deserves a million songs, countless odes to its intricacies. But I can sing this, too, and it's fine, it's good. It's a good song."

"Of course it's a good song," he replies, hoping Brendon will take it for the compliment it is. "I'll see you in LA?"

"Yup!" Brendon sounds unphased. "Catch ya later!"

He sets the phone down and goes to get his guitar.


End file.
